The ADA Amendments Act recently signed by President Bush contains some confusing demands for HR managers and their employers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has admitted that and is offering guidelines to help you cut through the confusion.
The EEOC offers the guidance in the form of a new publication, “The Americans with Disabilities Act: Applying Performance and Conduct Standards to Employees with Disabilities.”
The guide is broken down into nine major sections that help HR and frontline supervisors apply the regulations in real-life situations:
- Performance standards
- Conduct standards
- Questions pertaining to both performance and conduct issues
- Seeking medical information when there are performance or conduct problems
- Attendance issues
- Dress codes
- Alcoholism and illegal use of drugs
- Confidentiality issues arising from granting reasonable accommodation to avoid performance or conduct problems
- Legal enforcement
The main message of the guide is for supervisors who mistakenly believe that disabled employees get some sort of “pass” on conduct and performance — when, in fact, they should be held to the same standards as any other employees.
And the guide offers some to-the-point information on:
- Defining a “disability”
- Setting qualification standards
- What’s a “reasonable accommodation”
